6 days to the Satyagraha premiere!

Most of the improvisational work in this production of Satyagraha is performed by the Skills Ensemble, a unique team of performers brought together by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch to collaborate on the creation of their vision of Philip Glass’s opera. “They’re a mixture of aerialists, puppeteers, and performance-makers,” Crouch explains. “They’re the only people in the piece who don’t sing, but they do everything else.”

Watch a video of members of the Skills Ensemble rehearsing a scene from the first act. It’s set on a mythical battlefield, with two figures fighting each other. These are represented by large puppets assembled on stage.

Video: Charles Sheek

7 days to the Satyagraha premiere!

“It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and non-violence. It is either non-violence or non-existence.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Each of Satyagraha’s three acts references a historical figure connected to Gandhi and his ideas—Leo Tolstoy in the first, Rabindranath Tagore in the second, and Martin Luther King in the third act. King, who was assasinated 40 years ago on April 4, 1968, was a student of Gandhi’s teachings. He was struck by the concept of satyagraha, saying that “the Christian doctrine of love operating through the Gandhian method of non-violence was one of the most potent weapons available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.” During the turbulent times of the growing civil rights movement in America, King captured the attention of the world with his philosophy and commitment to non-violent resistance. He felt that it was the only solution that could right the evils of an unjust society. His and Gandhi’s message lives on throughout the world—and at the Met, in Satyagraha.

9 days to the Satyagraha premiere!

Video projections play an important part in the Met’s Satyagraha. They were created by Fifty Nine Productions, an English company founded by Leo Warner und Mark Grimmer that specializes in bringing together moving images and live performance. “Video design the way we do it involves the creation and integration of moving and static images into the stage picture,” Warner explains on the eve of rehearsals. “The vast majority of our work involves projection as the means by which images and footage are displayed on the stage, but we also work with screens, lights, and various emerging display technologies as they become available.” The bulk of the projections used in Satyagraha feature text and letters, most of them based visually on the look and type of Indian Opinion, the newspaper published by Gandhi. “We spent a good deal of time going through archives to get a real feel for the typographic styles that were employed,” Grimmer says. Some “real” examples from early copies of the Indian Opinion are included as well. “But,” Grimmer adds, “audiences will also see a range of different alphabets represented including Sanskrit and Gujarati. And there some brief filmic moments in the show—some archival footage from coverage of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, which form a rather abstract montage.” These images appear in the third act, which is informed by Martin Luther King and his relation to Gandhi.

In the last scene of the opera, there is a magical moment when a large panoramic sky and moving clouds are projected onto the back wall of the set, creating, as Grimmer puts it, “an expanse of landscape out of nowhere.” This is video design in a totally different style. In the end, though, all the technical wizardry only serves the purpose of the piece. Says Warner: “A successful production is one in which any element could be singled out as artistically outstanding, but where the overall impression is one of a cogent and cohesive whole—a show which is greater than the sum of its parts.”